MikeLiveira's Space: books

Showing posts with label books. Show all posts

Kalevala

The Kalevala is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology.

It is regarded as the national epic of Karelia and Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature. The Kalevala was instrumental in the development of the Finnish national identity, the intensification of Finland's language strife and the growing sense of nationality that ultimately led to Finland's independence from Russia in 1917.

The first version of The Kalevala (called The Old Kalevala) was published in 1835. The version most commonly known today was first published in 1849 and consists of 22,795 verses, divided into fifty songs (Finnish: runot). The title can be interpreted as "The Land of Kaleva" or "Kalevia".

The story

The Kalevala begins with the traditional Finnish creation myth, leading into stories of the creation of the earth, plants, creatures and the sky. Creation, healing, combat and internal story telling are often accomplished by the character(s) involved singing of their exploits or desires. Many parts of the stories involve a character hunting or requesting lyrics (spells) to acquire some skill, such as boat-building or the mastery of iron making.

As well as magical spell casting and singing, there are many stories of lust, romance, kidnapping and seduction. The protagonists of the stories often have to accomplish feats that are unreasonable or impossible which they often fail to achieve leading to tragedy and humiliation.

The Sampo is a pivotal element of the whole work. Many actions and their consequences are caused by the Sampo itself or a character's interaction with the Sampo. It is described as a magical talisman or device that brings its possessor great fortune and prosperity, but its precise nature has been the subject of debate to the present day.

There are also similarities with mythology and folklore from other cultures, for example the Kullervo character and his story bearing some likeness to the Greek Oedipus. The similarity of the virginal maiden Marjatta to the Christian Virgin Mary is also striking. The arrival of Marjatta's son in the final song spelling the end of Väinämöinen's reign over Kalevala is similar to the arrival of Christianity bringing about the end of Paganism in Finland and Europe at large.

The Kalevala

translated by John Martin Crawford

[1888]

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/kveng/index.htm

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904)

Deriving its title from the word for “ghost story” in Japanese Kwaidan is a book by scholar and translator Lafcadio Hearn in which are compiled an array of ghost stories hailing from Japan. Hearn writes in his introduction, written only months before his death, that the majority of the stories were translated from old Japanese texts (some of which themselves were based on earlier Chinese tales), although one of the stories, “Riki-Baka”, he declares to be of his own making, based on a personal experience. Unmentioned in the introduction, another of the stories — “Hi-Mawari”, written in the first person — appears almost certainly to be born from his own experience also, a recollection of a childhood experience in Wales (he’d spent time near Bangor when a child living with his Aunt). Among the many curious and spooky happenings related in the other stories, we hear of a musician called upon to perform for the dead, man-eating goblins, a mysterious face appearing in a cup of tea, and, rather terrifyingly, a featureless girl with a face as smooth as an egg. The final section of the book, titled “Insect-Studies”, is a presentation of Chinese and Japanese superstitions relating to the insect world, specifically butterflies (personifications of the human soul), mosquitoes (Karmic reincarnation of jealous or greedy people) and ants (mankind’s superior in terms of chastity, ethics, social structure, longevity and evolution).

In 1964, Masaki Kobayashi’s highly acclaimed Kwaidan was released, a Japanese anthology horror film based on stories from Hearn’s collections of Japanese folk tales, mainly his Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things after which the film was named.

Housed at: Internet Archive | From: California Digital Library

Underlying Work:PD Worldwide| Digital Copy:No Additional Rights

Download: PDF | Text and eBook option at Project Gutenberg

JET STREAM by Austin Ferguson (Bantam 1974)

With so many people travelling all over here for Thanksgiving (the biggest U.S. travel holiday of the year, if I've heard correctly), a flight-themed paperback seemed like just the thing.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: one thing I love about the groovy age is its love affair with air travel. A cosmopolitan sensibility permeates the popular culture, and the passenger jetliner is its central symbol. Aggressive television advertising campaigns helped create and foster this image, and there's a lot of stunning painted brochure and poster artwork, on a par with some of the finest movie posters and paperback covers, to be found by anyone who cares to look.

Flying has, alas, lost much of its lustre for us. In the wake of 9/11, it's a tense, harried, sometimes invasive experience--to say nothing of the belt-tightening measures airlines have adopted (and imposed on passengers), which make it all so much less luxurious. Of course, the groovy age had its own spate of air terrorism, hijackings, and piracy, but counterbalancing that in the Zeitgeist are scenes like the one in The Opening of Misty Beethoven, where beautiful stewardesses offer passengers a variety of erotic services along with the meals and beverages (sorry, I don't have the disc or I'd post a screenshot here!). Today, the only ads I see pertaining to air travel are online services competing to promise the lowest rates—nothing to create an air of glamour or the romance of flying to destinations that hold exciting promise.

So, on to Jet Stream! First, I just love that painted cover by illustrator Lou Feck. If you think it looks "generic" (as one person said to me), look again. In the airplane and especially the airport, the gorgous telltale stylings that mark this as a groovy age illustration are evident.

I enjoyed the story tons, but I was a bit shocked at how much it copied Arthur Hailey's Airport: you have the terrible blizzard, the dangerous maniac onboard who threatens the whole flight, the pilot torn between two women, the fun and fascinating glimpses behind the scenes of air travel, the harried people on the ground doing everything they can to brace for the inevitable disaster . . . I would call it a ripoff, but it's really pulled off very well and with enough style that both novels are worth reading if, like me, you're a fan of this sort of thing. Hailey brings a tad more of that potboiling blockbuster energy to his story, whereas Ferguson handles the characters with a little more finesse. Really, if you like one, you'll like the other, so if this sounds like your sort of thing, I'd strongly recommend both.

Cosmography Manuscript (12th Century)

This wonderful series of medieval cosmographic diagrams and schemas are sourced from a late 12th-century manuscript created in England. Coming to only nine folios, the manuscript is essentially a scientific textbook for monks, bringing together cosmographical knowledge from a range of early Christian writers such as Bede and Isodere, who themselves based their ideas on such classical sources as Pliny the Elder, though adapting them for their new Christian context. As for the intriguing diagrams themselves, The Walters Art Museum, which holds the manuscript and offers up excellent commentary on its contents, provides the following description:

The twenty complex diagrams that accompany the texts in this pamphlet help illustrate [the ideas], and include visualizations of the heavens and earth, seasons, winds, tides, and the zodiac, as well as demonstrations of how these things relate to man. Most of the diagrams are rotae, or wheel-shaped schemata, favored throughout the Middle Ages for the presentation of scientific and cosmological ideas because they organized complex information in a clear, orderly fashion, making this material easier to apprehend, learn, and remember. Moreover, the circle, considered the most perfect shape and a symbol of God, was seen as conveying the cyclical nature of time and the Creation as well as the logic, order, and harmony of the created universe.

A couple of the diagrams feature the so-called “T-O map”, which Walters describes as “a conceptual diagram intended to show the relative positions of the three continents”.

The T, the Mediterranean Sea, separates Asia, Europe, and Africa, while the O is the surrounding ocean. Although the origins of the T-O map lie in the literature of classical antiquity, some of the earliest surviving pictorial examples occur in early medieval manuscripts of the works of Isidore of Seville.